Ethiopian Review - Where are the US civilians in the ‘Modern Warfare 2′ video game? Thanks Joker961.
But while Activision producers go to great lengths to depict fatally wounded Russian civilians leaving big streaks of blood as they crawl on the airport floor – all in the name of realism – they designed the US-based levels in such a way that no virtual American civilian can be seen nor hurt.

The game includes scenes featuring the near-annihilation of Washington DC, but even the depiction of US civilian corpses remains taboo – a sharp contrast to the Brazilian favela or Russian airport levels.

Couch Campus - Genre Wars: Downside of the RPG Takeover. Thanks Ant via Slashdot.
Now, I’m not here to rain on the RPG parade. I don’t think that it’s clearly a bad thing that FPS games are beginning to adopt more and more from other genres. I actually believe that the combination of RTS elements into this genre is largely under-explored. That’s what makes indy titles like Natural Selection 2, and (hopefully) Nuclear Dawn so appealing, and it’s the reason that despite the awesome looking Bad Company 2 on the horizon, we’re still all really waiting for Battlefield 3. On the other hand, the adoption of RPG mechanics into the genre is anything but under-explored. Practically every new release into the genre, be its focus on single or multiplayer, is entrenched in progression more typical of World of Warcraft than Quakeworld.

IndustryGamers - Why Brand IP Doesn't Matter to Online Games. By Alex St. John.
The online world, however, harkens back to the days of the game arcade, which didn’t demand a major cash outlay on the consumer’s part to find out if Pac-Man or Asteroids was truly a great game. It cost a quarter, and if the game didn’t deliver the consumer never played it again. Thus, like modern online games the amount of money an arcade game made was in direct proportion to how addictive the actual gameplay mechanic was, NOT on how big its marketing budget or movie-tie-in was.